AZE.US
Azerbaijani economist Samir Aliyev has accused Kapital Bank of charging unfair fees and interest after he mistakenly transferred money from a credit card to the same card inside the Birbank app, saying the issue reflects a broader lack of consumer protection in the country’s financial sector.
A prominent Azerbaijani economist has accused Kapital Bank of making money from customer mistakes after he says he was charged both a fee and daily interest for an erroneous transfer inside the bank’s Birbank app.
Samir Aliyev wrote on Facebook that he has repeatedly criticized what he describes as unlawful practices by the bank, but says the lender continues to come up with new ways to profit from clients.
According to Aliyev, the problem arose while he was using two Birbank products – a debit card and a credit card. He said that, following the bank’s own recommendation on how to manage the grace period on the credit card, he usually moves funds first to the debit card and only then to the credit card.
This time, however, he said he mistakenly made a transfer from the credit card to itself instead of sending the money from the debit card to the credit card.
Aliyev said that after the mistaken transaction, the bank deducted a 4% fee from 50 manats, or 2 manats, and began charging 5 gapiks a day in interest – which he said amounts to roughly 35% annually.
He argued that the situation is especially hard to justify because the transfer was not made to another person or even to another card, but effectively to the same card. In his view, the system should either block such an operation entirely or clearly warn the customer in advance about the financial consequences.
Aliyev said he asked a bank representative why the app allows a customer to make a transfer between the same card if the transaction is then treated like a cash withdrawal or another fee-generating operation. According to him, the response was that his suggestion had been noted and that steps might be taken in the future. What would happen to the money he had already lost, he said, was left unanswered.
He stressed that the issue is not about 2 manats or a few gapiks in daily interest, but about the quality of service provided to customers and the possibility that similar small charges may be collected from large numbers of users in comparable situations.
Aliyev used the episode to make a broader point about Azerbaijan’s financial sector, arguing that ordinary users of banking services are effectively left without real protection. He said consumer rights are being violated on a mass scale, while the mechanisms meant to defend those rights are either weak or practically nonexistent.
He also accused banks and other credit institutions of taking advantage of low financial literacy among the population by providing incomplete or misleading information and pushing people deeper into debt. In his criticism, Aliyev said lenders later hide behind contract terms when disputes emerge.
He also took aim at the regulator, saying the Central Bank of Azerbaijan is acting, at best, like an observer and is not moving quickly enough to take concrete action.
The dispute may add to a broader debate in Azerbaijan over transparency in banking services, the design of digital financial products and whether consumers have enough protection when mistakes turn into fees.